


life is sweet (in the belly of the beast)

by doctorkaitlyn



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Coping, Domestic, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, POV Jamie, Slice of Life, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27960086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: On the days where loss weighs heavily across Jamie's shoulders, she forces herself to turn away from the dark and towards the light. She forces herself to focus on the good days that they had together.There were so many of them. Thousands of them.She can’t let them fade away.And so, she remembers.(or, five of Jamie's favorite memories of Dani, the ones she clings to on the days where everything hurts.)
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33
Collections: Mistletoe Exchange 2020





	life is sweet (in the belly of the beast)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FictionPenned](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/gifts).



> this was written for the Miseltoe Exchange 2020 for FictionPenned! Some of the prompts I used for this from your General Likes were slice of life, characters reckoning with hard emotions, choosing between the easy thing and the right thing, intimate moments and missing scenes. I hope that you enjoy! 
> 
> title comes from [Stay Young, Go Dancing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFW2ZlyVXEw%22) by Death Cab for Cutie, which is a very lovely song.
> 
> major thanks to my lovely partner for taking the time to edit this. any remaining typos or screw-ups are on me.

In the grand scheme of things, they had more good days than bad. 

This knowledge is a blessing, one that Jamie clings to in the dead of night, when her bed is too cold and she has only her plants for company. 

Of course, there’s no denying that as the years went by, as the Lady of the Lake made herself harder to ignore, the number of bad days increased. There were days where Dani only moved from their bed to the couch and back again. There were some days where even that was too much, where she stayed buried in their blankets, only her pale face peeking out, rarely asking for what she needed (food, a glass of water, a hand to hold) but visibly grateful when Jamie knew and provided it all the same. 

Over a period of years, they made more and more compromises on certain parts of their lives in order to keep Dani as safe as possible. Going to the beach had been one of the first, although truthfully, that had been an easy decision for Jamie to live with – no matter how much sunscreen she plastered on, she always burned whenever they went. So, when their final trip ended prematurely with Dani stammering out an excuse about a headache and fleeing back to their car, Jamie had been more than willing to go along with it. 

They took down the mirror in their bedroom, and Jamie installed curtains over the small one that fronted the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, so that Dani could cover it up as need be. If they wanted to go out to dinner, Jamie always scoped out the place first, asked their friends about it or called ahead and inquired about the décor, checked to see if there were mirrors running the length of the room, mirrors that Dani wouldn’t be able to avoid. Even in cases where the restaurants were safe (or as safe as possible, rather), Jamie still made a habit of going to the bathroom when Dani did. Even if she didn’t have to actually go, she could still stand in front of the mirror and touch up her lip balm or fix her hair, and that way, when Dani came out of the stall, she wasn’t entirely alone in a room filled with reflective surfaces that could all too easily suck her into their depths. 

It was one of those things that they never actually spoke about, but based on the tiny sigh of relief that left Dani’s lips whenever she stepped out of the stall and saw that Jamie was waiting for her, Jamie thought that the gesture was appreciated. 

As the years ticked by, the concessions continued to add up. After the mirrors, Dani needed to stop doing the washing up after dinner, because every time she looked down into the soapy water, she saw the Lady staring up at her with her blank face and empty eyes. Right around the same time, baths became an impossibility as well. Jamie had felt this concession more than the others – they’d spent many long evenings soaking together, crammed into their small, shallow tub, sloshing water and bubbles over the side as they passed a bottle of wine back and forth. But she could always take baths alone, when Dani wasn’t home. It was easy enough to adjust to. 

On some days, even taking a shower was a near insurmountable task. Whenever possible, Jamie showered with Dani, excusing her actions with a joke about conserving water, a joke that Dani clearly saw through, but that she laughed at anyways. On the days where she had already showered or wasn’t feeling up to it, Jamie stayed in the bathroom with Dani, sat on the counter and clipped her nails, read a book, or carried on a conversation while surreptitiously watching Dani through their transparent shower curtain, trying to pretend that she was in the room solely because she loved Dani’s company and not because there was panic fluttering in the depths of her heart that wouldn’t subside until Dani was done.

Despite Jamie’s best efforts, towards the end, those efforts had become mostly ineffective. Jamie would say something to her, and when Dani didn’t answer, Jamie would look over and find her staring vacantly at the swirls of water disappearing down the drain. As they got closer to the end, saying Dani’s name once was rarely sufficient to bring her back; she had to say it three or four times before a flicker of awareness appeared in Dani’s eyes, and if that wasn’t enough, she had to pull the shower curtain aside, heart pounding against her ribs, and gently shake Dani. Every time that she did that, hair and clothes soaked from the spray of the shower, she had been convinced that she wouldn’t be successful, that this would be the time where Dani didn’t come back to her, where she lost her for good. The panic that filled her felt like a dark, evil thing, like she had her own ghost clawing away at her mind and heart. 

But Dani always came back. Slowly at first, the glaze lifting from her eyes like melting snow, and then all at once, head whipping around as she grew reacquainted with her surroundings. Whenever that happened, she always wrapped her arms tight around Jamie, buried her wet face into the crook of Jamie’s neck, and said _I’m sorry_ , over and over again, until the words ran together. 

It didn’t matter that Jamie told her there was nothing to apologize for. It wasn’t just a meaningless platitude either. Dani was fighting a battle that Jamie couldn’t even imagine. She was never mad that Dani slipped away from her; rather, she was _grateful_ that somehow, Dani kept coming back to her. 

She kept coming back, until the day that she didn’t. 

So yes, they certainly had their fair share of bad days. They spent many hours holding each other, exhausted to the bone from sobbing, unable to do anything but cling to each other like lifeboats, hoping that their love would be enough to keep them afloat. 

It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. 

But Jamie doesn’t like to linger on those days. It would be easy to get sucked into that whirlpool, easy to drown herself in misery and despair. With only a little effort, she would be able to recall exactly how it felt to go through those times together, how her heart ached to watch Dani’s pain, how her mind raged at the knowledge that the love of her life was in agony, and there was nothing that she could do about it. She could make an effort, but in the end, it would be like trying to use duct tape to fix a hole in the hull of a boat – all it would do would delay the inevitable for a few seconds. 

In the days immediately after she returned from Bly for the last time, when she saw Dani floating at the bottom of the lake every time she closed her eyes, she _had_ gotten a little bit lost. She replayed their last few years over and over again, agonized over specific moments. What if she had tried harder? Was there something else that she could have done to slow the spread of the Lady through Dani’s mind? 

What could she have done to save Dani? 

The answer, as she realized after some time removed from the situation, time that she mostly spent in bed watching the weather change, was nothing. The two of them had done all that they could. And their combined efforts (although most of the recognition belonged to Dani and her impossibly deep reserves of strength) had led to so many wonderful years together. Despite the bad days, those years were indisputably the best of Jamie’s life. Before Dani, she’d assumed that the rest of her life would be spent at Bly, that her day to day would rarely vary, that she would work on the grounds until she was a tottering old woman, and then she would die alone, very possibly in the same flat above the village pub, the one that always smelled of vinegar, soggy chips and stale beer, no matter how often she aired the place out. 

But Dani had changed that. She had shown Jamie that, while the world was still a shitty place by and large, it wasn’t entirely without its good qualities. People as a whole may not have been worth the effort, but there were exceptions to the rule. 

Dani had been an exception. She had been a _gift_ , and she wouldn’t want Jamie to spend the remainder of her life lost in memories of their bad days, overwhelmed and angry and frustrated that their time together was cut short. She would have wanted Jamie to think about the good. She would have wanted Jamie to be happy, to one day move on and find joy again. 

So instead, on the days where loss weighs heavily across her shoulders, when her chest grows tight and her head aches, Jamie forces herself to turn away from the dark and towards the light. She forces herself to focus on the good days that they had together. 

There were so many of them. Thousands of them. 

She can’t let them fade away. 

And so, she remembers.

1.

“This place is a right mess.”

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Dani says, glancing around the apartment, hands on her hips. She’s dressed in loose jeans that are worn out at the knees and a baggy t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her hair is pulled back into a sleek ponytail, gleaming like silken thread in the diluted sun coming through the dirty windowpanes. To Jamie, she looks like something out of a dream or an old painting. “It’s just… a work in progress. That’s all.” 

“If this is what you call _not bad_ , I don’t wanna see your definition of shithole,” Jamie responds, slinging her arms around Dani’s waist and tucking her chin over the curve of Dani’s shoulder. “This is gonna take forever.” 

Considering that she also agreed to move into this place, Jamie knows that she really doesn’t have any grounds for complaining. The classified ad that they had responded to specifically said that the place was a fixer-upper, and the accompanying pictures, grainy as they were, had confirmed as much. However, the ad had also said that, if the tenants were willing to do some work on the place, the rent would be adjusted accordingly, and since the rent was _already_ cheap, it was an opportunity that they (literally) couldn’t afford to pass up. 

And so, they had moved into the place. They had collected the keys from the landlord and shouldered their duffel bags up the steep flight of stairs that led to the apartment. As Jamie had fished through her pocket for the keys, she had found herself giggling quietly, unable to believe that this moment was real, that the two of them had made it this far, that they were together in the here and now.

But as soon as she had pushed open the door and gotten a good look at the place, her laughter had faded away. 

Not only do they have a lot of work to do in order to make the place remotely comfortable, but there is a _ton_ of cleaning to do. It seems like an insurmountable task, and if it wasn’t for the fact that they’ve already submitted first and last months’ rent and checked out of the motel they were staying in, Jamie would seriously consider fleeing. She doesn’t mind hard work, not at all, but this is a _lot_. 

Dani, however, seems to think the whole thing will be fun. 

Turning around in Jamie’s embrace, Dani drapes her own arms around Jamie’s neck and kisses her on the forehead. “It’ll look better once we’ve painted. Probably.” 

Jamie glances around the room. The walls are a particularly ugly shade of pale yellow, like milk that has gone off. Dani is right – anything is better than looking at this. With a nod, she leans up and kisses Dani on the side of her neck, above her pulse point. 

“Alright, Poppins. You’ve won me over. Let’s get started.” 

The color that they’ve chosen for the living room walls is a soft mint green, but they don’t get a chance to put it on that night. By the time they finish sanding down the walls and applying a layer of white primer, it’s beginning to get dark, and even though they’ve had every window in the place cracked open almost from the first moment they stepped into the apartment, trying to air out the lingering smells of stale booze and dust, Jamie is starting to get a headache from the fumes. 

Still, while there’s so much work remaining to be done, she has to admit that Dani was right. While they were waiting for the primer to dry, they’d split off to divide and conquer – Dani had gone over the windows with glass cleaner, and Jamie had swept the other rooms, gathering up what seemed like a decade’s worth of grit and dust and cat hair – and so, at the very least, the place looks a little less neglected now. 

They order in Chinese food and eat sitting on the bedroom floor while they read, leaning against each other for support. Jamie only makes it through a chapter before she starts to nod off – it’s been a hell of a long day, and she knows that tomorrow is going to be about the same. Her shoulders ache from pushing the paint roller up and down the wall, and she rolls a knot out of them as she closes her book with a yawn. 

“I’m about ready to pass out,” she answers. Dani jumps slightly, which is what turns Jamie onto the fact that she wasn’t the only one nodding off. 

“Yeah, me too,” she answers, rubbing at her eyes and yawning. “We probably should have ordered our mattress for today.” 

Jamie shrugs. “S’okay. I’ve slept in worse places. You go wash up, and I’ll make us a nest.” 

Dani giggles and kisses Jamie on the cheek. “Okay. Be right back.” 

Jamie watches her head out of the room. She’s exhausted, but she also feels… content. Not only is it a good day for the two of them, it’s a good day for Dani specifically. She’s been clear and present, hasn’t drifted off at all. The Lady hasn’t butted in between them. It’s just her and Dani, and it feels like she can breathe properly, like she’s inhaling nothing but clear spring air (and lingering paint fumes). 

She doesn’t know how many days they’ll have like this, but she’ll take every last one that she can get. 

By the time that Dani returns from the bathroom, Jamie has constructed something that will serve as a bed. Thankfully, while their mattress might not be arriving for a few more days, they have pillows and blankets, and Jamie stacks up every last one of them, adding some thicker sweaters in between layers for more cushioning. It won’t be the most comfortable thing in the world, despite her best efforts, but it’s still better than the floor. 

“Looks wonderful,” Dani says, lowering herself down onto the pile of blankets. “You’re as good with nests as you are with plants.” She’s let her hair down and changed into flannel pajama pants and one of Jamie’s t-shirts, and Jamie wants nothing more than to dive under the blankets and pull her close. 

But sadly, brushing her teeth has to come first, and she reluctantly leaves the room to do so, telling Dani to try and stay awake until she gets back. 

Based on the way Dani says _okay_ through a wide yawn, Jamie suspects that it’ll be a bit of a lost cause, but hey, a girl can dream. 

She rushes through her routine, and when she comes back, Dani is snuggled under the blankets, curled up on her side. Her eyes are closed, but as Jamie sits down to join her, they flicker open halfway, and a small smile spreads across her face. 

“I’m really glad that we’re here,” Dani says, words slurred slightly by sleep. “Together, I mean.” 

Frankly, Jamie wishes that she could give Dani something more. She wishes she could give her more than a dilapidated apartment in a small town in Vermont, more than a bed on the floor. She wishes she could take away the uncertainty of their future, wishes she could take away the burden that is weighing Dani down, the burden that makes itself clear whenever Jamie looks into Dani’s differently colored eyes. 

But more than anything, she wants Dani to be happy, and based on the sleepy smile on her face and the languid way that she’s stroking the curve of Jamie’s waist, Jamie thinks she’s at least succeeded in that regard. 

“Yeah,” she answers, reaching up and turning off the crooked standing lamp in the corner of the room before she settles in and drapes her arm around Dani, pulling her in tight. “Me too.”

2.

They barely have their feet underneath them with the apartment, have just gotten it into a habitable state, when Jamie sees another classified ad in the paper offering a retail space for rent, right at the end of the main business drag in town. It seems too good to be true, and she stares at the ad for a long time, tapping her pen against the newspaper, trying to talk herself out of calling. There are so many reasons why it’s too early for her to even think about it. For starters, their savings have been almost entirely wrecked by the motel and all of the various supplies they purchased to fix up the apartment. While Dani has been lucky enough to find some substitute teaching and nanny gigs, Jamie hasn’t found anything substantial yet, just some temporary jobs around town, mainly mowing lawns and some light landscaping.

Unfortunately, while she’s happy with the town that they’ve settled in, there is a distinct lack of old manor houses with sprawling grounds that require her loving attention. 

Perhaps more importantly, while she doesn’t want to shortchange herself, she doesn’t know a lot about running a business. She had been planning on striking out on her own after she’d been released from prison, but before she could make any strides in that direction, the Wingraves had taken her on, and she hadn’t felt the need to do any more research into the idea after that. 

But despite all of those reasons, she wants to do this. She knows that she wants to keep working with plants, but she doesn’t know how many more years she wants to spend working outside. It’s an unforgiving job, brutal at times, hard on the knees and back, all aches and pains and shredded skin. She doesn’t want to be sixty years old and stuck outside in the pouring rain, feeling her arthritis throbbing as she trims a rosebush for some rich arsehole. 

But she can’t give up on plants. They saved her life; turning her back on them now would feel like the worst kind of betrayal. Not to mention the fact that she doesn’t know where she’d start even _if_ she gave them up. Working with plants is the only time she’s ever felt any kind of direction to her life, where she ever felt like she was _good_ at something. 

Besides, she can learn the business side of things. The town’s library is surprisingly well-stocked, and there’s a career center up the street, close enough that she can see it if she leans out the window. She’s sure that they could put her on the right track. Hell, maybe she could even do a correspondence course from a community college. 

She’s already done the hard part. She’s learned how to listen to plants, how to unravel their needs, how to read them as clearly as a book. Everything else should be a piece of cake. 

Before she can lose her nerve, she tears the ad out of the newspaper, crosses the room to the phone and dials the number in the advertisement. After a brief conversation with the owner of the space, an older woman named Marie who sounds genuinely enthused about her idea to have a flower and plant shop, she ends up with an appointment to view the space the next day. When she hangs up, her hands are shaking, and she immediately grabs her cigarettes from the kitchen table and moves over to sit underneath the window and blow smoke out into the early afternoon air. 

Now that she’s done the deed, she realizes that she probably should have discussed this with Dani first. She’s not going to ask Dani to contribute financially, but it’s still a huge decision, one that she should have gotten Dani’s feedback on before she went through with it. For all she knows, even though it hasn’t come up in conversation and she seems perfectly content, maybe Dani is thinking about settling down elsewhere. If that’s the case, then Jamie is perfectly happy to follow her wherever, but it’ll be a lot more difficult to do that if it only comes up after she’s already agreed to a yearlong lease, or whatever the case may be. 

She chain smokes and tries her best to focus on a book for the rest of the afternoon. When she finally hears Dani’s key scraping in the lock, she springs to her feet and tosses her latest cigarette out the window, heart pounding, hands shaking again. Wiping her clammy palms on her overalls, she tries to look composed as Dani comes in, carrying a tote bag full of groceries. There’s what appears to be marker on one of her cheeks, and Jamie imagines that she has some stories to tell about her day. 

But those stories will have to wait, because even though she tries to stop herself, before Dani can so much as say hello, Jamie blurts out, “I think I did something stupid.” 

Dani immediately drops the groceries onto the kitchen table and asks, “What happened?” She doesn’t sound angry or suspicious; she sounds _worried_ , and the sincerity in her voice lessens Jamie’s anxiety. She’s still scared that she made a mistake, that she’ll have to call Marie back up and make a fool out of herself in the process, but she at least knows that Dani isn’t going to be mean about it. 

(Not that Dani is mean about anything, but still, that doesn’t stop the worry from germinating inside of Jamie’s mind.) 

“There’s a place for rent, down the block,” she starts out, curling her hands around Dani’s waist. It helps her feel a little more stable, a little more rooted to the spot. At the very least, now that she’s gripping something, the trembling of her hands is less noticeable. “A storefront, I mean. Near the bank. And I… I called today. Made an appointment to see the place.” 

Some of the worry has bled out of Dani’s face, replaced with mild confusion in the form of a furrowed brow. Her own hands come up to rest on the side of Jamie’s neck, thumbs lightly brushing back and forth against her skin. “Oh?” 

“Yeah.” Jamie swallows heavily before she continues. “I thought that it might be nice to try and make something of myself. More than I’ve been doing, more than just mowing people’s lawns. I was thinking of a flower shop. Somehow, a town this size doesn’t have one, just the big garden center near the freeway, and their stuff is crap quality and-“ 

Before Jamie can risk being swept away by the strength of her own rambling, Dani leans in and kisses her firmly, hard enough to make Jamie take a step back before she finds her balance, threading her arms around Dani’s back and pulling them back together. For a few moments, Jamie completely forgets why her hands are shaking, why they’re standing in this embrace in the first place. The only thing she’s able to focus on is the various sensations directly related to Dani – the feeling of her hands pressing into Jamie’s neck, her long slender fingers threading up into her curly hair, the gentle brush of her tongue against Jamie’s bottom lip, the softness of her skin underneath her sweater. 

But, unfortunately, as much as Jamie wishes such a thing were possible, she isn’t able to stay lost in Dani forever. Eventually, she has to fill her aching lungs, and it is with great reluctance that she does so. When she does, all of her anxiety and doubt comes rushing right back. 

Thankfully, it doesn’t stick around for long. After she slowly flutters her eyes open, Dani beams at her, eyes sparkling, fingers still wrapped up in Jamie’s hair. 

“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” she says. “Not stupid at all. Every town should have a flower shop in it.” 

“I agree,” Jamie says, unable to keep herself from sighing with pure relief. “You don’t have to help out, of course. You’ve got enough going on with your own stuff.” 

Dani’s smile flags slightly. “But I want to help. You don’t have to do this alone. _We_ can do this.” She leans in for another kiss, and while it’s quicker than their last, Jamie still finds herself breathless again by the time Dani pulls back. “I took a few business classes in school. I know it’s not a lot, but it’s something, right?” 

Unexpectedly, Jamie’s eyes grow warm with tears. There’s nothing particularly emotional about the moment, not on a surface level at least, but the fact remains that she couldn’t have imagined this in her wildest dreams, the ones she used to lose herself in on her bunk after lights-out, while she waited for sleep to claim her for the night. She never would have imagined that she’d be across the ocean in a totally different country, that she’d have a supportive, beautiful partner as wonderful as Dani, as patient and honest and _kind_ , who unfailingly thinks of others before herself, who always tries to find new ways to be helpful. 

Jamie doesn’t know what she did in a past life to deserve this, but she’s grateful for her ancestors, for all their hard work that led to this moment, because it’s sure as hell nothing she did that got her here. 

“Okay,” she replies gratefully, wiping at the one tear that has managed to make its way down her cheek before she leans in and kisses Dani’s smooth cheek, right near the errant smudge of marker. “Yes. Please help me, Poppins. I don’t have a damn clue what I’m doing.” 

Dani laughs and bumps her nose against Jamie’s before she rests their foreheads together. “I don’t really know what I’m doing either. But we’ll figure it out. We figured out how to make this apartment livable. I don’t think starting a new business can compare to that at all.” She’s clearly being facetious, but Jamie still finds herself laughing. 

“You’ve got a point there.” 

For a few moments, even though a practical part of Jamie’s mind is aware that they should really deal with the groceries that Dani brought home, they don’t separate. They stay standing in the middle of the room, clinging to each other tightly, swaying a little back and forth to the rhythm of their breathing. 

It’s utter peace, and Jamie would give up anything to stay in this one moment for the rest of their lives.

Sadly, such a thing is not possible. When they eventually separate, she takes the time to look Dani in the eye and say, “Thank you. I couldn’t do this without you.” 

A pink tinge floods Dani’s cheeks, and she looks down towards the floor. 

“I don’t know about that. But you’re welcome.” With a final kiss to Jamie’s forehead, she steps away. “C’mon, let’s put this stuff away before the milk goes bad.”

3.

As it turns out, setting up a new business is utterly terrifying.

While having access to the career center and the library helps, it feels like, for every one thing that Jamie gets the hang of, there are three other things that she needs to learn about. There’s so much paperwork, so many different things relating to money that she needs to worry about (taxes and a separate bank account and so on), not to mention that the store itself needs to be put into shape. They have to put in new shelving and lights and fridges for the flowers, and Jamie goes to sleep every night with dollar signs and her credit card statements flashing in front of her eyes. She works on getting the store ready from sunup to sundown, and yet, every day, it feels like she’s no further ahead. 

There are so many days where she thinks about quitting. There are days where something breaks or she discovers that she filled out a form wrong or a piece of equipment malfunctions, and she’s caught between bursting into tears or screaming with rage, planting her foot through the plate glass window at the front of the storefront and simply saying _fuck it_ to the whole endeavor.

The only thing that gets her through the many setbacks, the only thing that keeps her going when all she wants to do is collapse like a house of cards, is Dani. 

Even though she’s still taking on work where she can find it, landing a few substitute gigs that actually last a few weeks at a time, she helps Jamie out wherever she can. She stops by the shop when she’s done at the school and brings Jamie dinner and tea (always procured from the nearby diner – as hard as she tries, Dani still can’t make a passable cuppa). There are many nights where, instead of being at their kitchen table, they sit on the dusty floor of the shop, eating noodles and dumplings out of waxed cardboard containers with disposable chopsticks. There are just as many nights where Dani ducks over to the career center to ask a question on Jamie’s behalf, where she fills out paperwork and calls suppliers while Jamie works in the main room, painting the walls or shining the counter or doing any one of the dozens of other tasks that need to be done if they want the place to look like a respectable shop. And at the end of the night, it’s Dani who rubs Jamie’s back when it’s aching and sore, who holds her tight when Jamie is too tired to do anything other than lay in bed and muse aloud about whether or not she’s made a mistake. 

The only reason that Jamie makes it through those long weeks and months, the only reason that, on a beautiful Saturday morning in late summer, she gets to turn the sign on the window from closed to open for the first time, is Dani. 

Dani has perched herself on a stool behind the counter with a stack of assignments that need to be marked. Despite that, every time Jamie looks over at her (which is often – looking at Dani is the only thing that makes her nausea abate even slightly), Dani’s eyes are darting around, as if she’s searching for something she can do, something that she can help with. 

But, for the moment, there’s nothing to do. The place is scrupulously clean, the floors swept and mopped and waxed, gleaming in the sunlight coming through the windows at the front of the shop. The air is thick with the smell of flowers and dirt, a smell that would make Jamie feel more at ease if it wasn’t for the tremendous amount of pressure on her. She has checked the stability of every shelf in the place more times than she can count, and none of them are missing screws or at danger of falling over. She placed ads in the paper for the last two weeks, and she even has a sandwich board outside with green and gold balloons attached to it announcing that they are open for business. 

Aside from paperwork (which never seems to end), there’s nothing that either of them can do but wait. 

That doesn’t stop Jamie from immediately walking over to the nearest shelf and fiddling with a selection of pots, adjusting them so that they’re all exactly the same distance from the edge of the shelf. 

“What if no one comes?” she asks. 

“It’s only been three minutes,” Dani replies, voice slightly muffled due to the fact that she’s chewing on her pen. “Someone will come.” 

Before Jamie can respond, the bell over the door rings, and her heart stops in her tracks. She tries to compose herself as she turns around to greet the customer, who turns out to be Marie, her landlord. At first, she takes Marie’s visit to be no more than a social call, but to Jamie’s surprise and utter relief, Marie carefully picks up a pot containing an utterly gorgeous gardenia the color of lavender and beams at Jamie as she carries it over to the counter. She continues to chatter while Dani rings up the purchase, and all the while, Jamie grips the edge of the counter, hoping like hell that Marie can’t see the anxious trembling taking over her limbs. Once Dani has finished ringing her up, Marie picks up her gardenia again, casually announces that at least four of her friends plan on stopping by, and heads for the door with a promise to come back later in the week and see how they’re doing. Somehow, by sheer force of will, Jamie makes it through the conversation without stammering or collapsing, but as soon as the door closes behind Marie with a faint tinkling of the bell, her knees sag, and all of her breath rushes out in a whoosh. 

“Christ,” she says, feeling like she’s just ran a marathon. Before she can say anything else, Dani, who is still seated on the stool, wraps her arms around Jamie’s waist and pulls her in close, resting her head against Jamie’s shoulder. Realistically, Jamie knows that it’s a position that they can’t stay in for long – while the windows at the front of the store are partially covered up by plants, it’s still easy enough to see outside, and while their town may be fairly liberal, Jamie doesn’t want to push her luck. 

But despite knowing all that, she isn’t ready to let go. Not yet, at least. 

“I told you someone would come in,” Dani says, sounding proud. 

Proud of _her_. Proud of Jamie. 

“Yeah, well,” Jamie replies, having to put in effort to talk over the lump in her throat, “only reason any of this is here at all is you.” Turning her head, she presses a kiss into Dani’s hair. “S’all because of you.” 

She has no doubt that Dani probably disagrees with her, but before they can go further down that road, the bell over the door rings again, and they spring apart so that Dani can go back to marking and Jamie can greet her second customer of the day. 

It’s the second of many. 

And she has Dani to thank for every last one.

4.

Their wedding is a small, intimate affair, not because of necessity (not wholly, at least), but because that is how they want it to be.

They keep the guest list limited to only a few of their closest friends. Dani doesn’t invite her parents – she hasn’t talked much about them, but from what Jamie can discern, they are grudgingly tolerant of the fact that Dani has decided to settle down with a woman, but their tolerance doesn’t translate into acceptance. She doesn’t try to push Dani into reconsidering – she doesn’t want Dani’s parents there anyways. She wants their day to be filled with only love. 

They invite Henry, but he’s too tied up with the kids and business to make the trip. Instead, he sends a whopper of a wedding present in the form of a tidy sum and an all-expenses paid vacation to a resort in California. 

(Jamie is already thinking about the sunburn she will inevitably end up with, but the shocked expression that crosses Dani’s face when she opens the envelope, followed by a bright smile, means that she’s already looking forward to the trip as well.) 

Owen, on the other hand, not only comes, but is more than willing to be their officiant when they ask. He’s positively _delighted_ by the offer, and when he arrives at their apartment the morning of, fresh from his hotel and dressed in a dapper dark gray suit, his mustache looking more salt than pepper these days (although it’s as thick and well-groomed as ever), he’s grinning as bright as a star in the night sky. 

“Hello, my loves,” he says, tugging them both into an embrace. “I’m so very glad to be here.” 

They stand around talking for longer than they really should – by the time Dani breezes out the door with a dress bag under one arm, on her way to their friend’s house to get ready, she’s running fifteen minutes late. Frankly, Jamie is amazed that they’re _only_ running fifteen minutes late – she’s missed Owen dearly. Their regular telephone calls don’t capture the whole of him, his welcoming nature, the way he immediately puts her at ease just by being himself. They have so much to catch up on, and as she gets ready, changing into the dark red pantsuit she’s been hiding in her half of the closet for weeks, they continue to talk, discussing the success of Owen’s restaurant and her shop, the latest news from Henry of Miles and Flora, and everything else in between. Talking to him keeps her from focusing too hard on her nerves, on losing herself in a spiral centered around her anxiety. 

The mood only flags once, after Jamie adds the finishing touch, a thin golden necklace that dangles down into the neckline of her white shirt, and steps out into the hallway, where Owen is waiting with his hands over his eyes. Once she announces that he can look, he lowers his hands, and smiles broadly. It isn’t quite the same smile as the one he graced her and Dani with earlier, however; it looks almost _wistful_ , slightly pained. 

“You look stunning,” he says. “I wish Hannah were here to see you.” 

Even though Jamie knew (or at least suspected) that it was coming, Hannah’s name still makes her stomach sink. In a world where things were fair, not only would Hannah be here with them, she would be here specifically with Owen, would be here holding his hand and rolling her eyes at his godawful puns. 

But, as painful as it is to acknowledge it, Jamie knew even before she left Bly that the world isn’t fair, and it will never be fair, no matter how hard she wishes it to be. So instead, she reaches for Owen’s hand and squeezes it tightly, using her other hand to dab at a tear that has fallen free from her eye. 

“Yeah,” she replies, swallowing heavily. “Me too.”

After that, they make their way over to the actual site of the wedding, which is a friend’s house on the outskirts of town. For the entirety of the short drive there, Jamie tries to distract herself from her damp palms and racing heart, and even though Owen keeps her engaged in conversation, it only works marginally. It’s still hard to believe that they’re doing this, that they’re actually moving forward with it. It feels like, at any given moment, she’s going to wake up to discover that the months that have passed since Dani proposed have been nothing more than a strange blend of fantasy and nightmare (depending on the specific day). It doesn’t feel like she’s _earned_ this. 

When they arrive, the driveway is already filled with cars, and as they head down towards the house, gravel crunching underneath Jamie’s shoes, every step makes it more clear that this is real. Even from outside, she can smell food, a mingling of scents from the variety of dishes people have brought (they’d chosen to go potluck style, not only to save on costs, but because it was more fun that way). The sun overhead is beating down on the back of her neck, and there’s a faint breeze in the air, bringing with it the sound of the small river burbling behind the house. Reality floods over her in a powerful wave, and it’s only Owen’s continued grip on her hand that keeps her from sagging to the ground in a heap. 

“You alright?” he asks, squeezing her fingers tightly. She nods rapidly and flashes a smile at her friend Lucy, the owner of the house, who has just opened the front door and is waving merrily. 

“Just… it’s a lot, y’know? Feels weird to actually be here, going through with it.” 

“I can only imagine. But I promise you, it’s real. I’m gonna be beside you, every step of the way. You lean on me if it gets too much.” 

Not for the first time, Jamie thanks whatever twists of fate led her to meet Owen, and she squeezes his hand back. 

“You ain’t careful, I might just take you up on that,” she replies as they meet up with Lucy, who immediately sweeps Jamie into a hug, complimenting her on her outfit and bombarding her with status updates on the food and the flowers (which Jamie put together herself) and the guests that have arrived and the ones they’re still waiting on. It’s a lot to take in all at once, but somehow, she manages to keep it all straight. While part of her wants to immediately find something to fixate on, wants to fuss with the flowers or duck into the bathroom to make sure that her hair is cooperating, she is told, in no uncertain terms, that there is nothing she needs to do, that it’ll all be taken care of, and Lucy escorts her outside while Owen remains inside to practice his speech. 

The backyard, which slopes down gently to meet the river, looks utterly gorgeous, like something out of a magazine. There are approximately two dozen white folding chairs, perfectly spaced apart, set up evenly on each side of the center aisle, which has been marked out by a long, red carpet strewn with orange and yellow flower petals. The end of each aisle is marked with a potted plant, all of them different, picked by Jamie specifically for their symbolic value: peonies for love, freesias for trust, lilies for devotion, and so on. There is no stage or alter at the end of the aisle – there’s just an metal archway which her, Dani and Owen will be standing underneath, with even more flowers woven through it so thickly that barely any of the metal is actually visible through the explosions of color. 

Between the decorations and the gentle flow of the river, the vivid green of the trees surrounding them and the sun shining overhead, it looks _perfect_.

She already has a lump in her throat, and she hasn’t even seen Dani yet. 

Maybe she should have skipped makeup. At the rate she’s going, it’s going to end up streaked halfway down her damn face by the end of the ceremony.

The next half hour ticks by agonizingly slowly. The remainder of their guests trickle in, filling up all of the seats, and while talking to them is a nice distraction, Jamie still finds herself wishing that she had a glass of something to swig back, something to settle her nerves. But she’s been completely banned from the house in order to prevent her from seeing Dani before it’s time, so instead, she settles for pacing from row to row, entering into bursts of small talk to keep herself occupied, checking her watch (small and gold, to match her necklace) approximately every three minutes. When Owen finally emerges from the house and starts making his way down the hill, she immediately breaks off her conversation and makes a beeline for him, meeting him halfway. 

“Do you know how much longer?” she asks, falling into stride with him as he heads for the archway. 

“Not long,” he replies, fingers flexing slightly around the small stack of index cards clutched in his hands. “You gonna be okay?” 

“Think I might throw up,” she answers honestly, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “How are you feeling?” 

“Feeling great,” Owen answers, and Jamie hears the rustle of his index cards brushing against each other again. “I’ve been practicing for days. Could probably do this in my sleep, although I don’t reckon you’d be happy with that.” 

“I’d be impressed, honestly, but yeah, not exactly the kind of performance we wanted you for.” Abruptly, she hears the chatter behind her fade away, followed by the scraping of wood against grass, and she opens her eyes as the guests go fully silent. “Is that-“

“Yes,” Owen says, squeezing her shoulder tightly, voice quiet. As quiet music starts up (not the traditional wedding march, far too drab and dreary – instead, they’d gone with a cello cover of an old rock tune), he continues, “It’s her.” 

For a few seconds, Jamie remains frozen in place, staring out at the river, her breathing at a snail’s pace. She wants to turn around, desperately wants to watch Dani make her way down the aisle, but what if she turns around and, instead of seeing Dani, she’s met with something with features washed clean by Bly’s lake? What if it’s the Lady standing there, ready to wrap her fingers tight around Jamie’s throat and choke her until she awakens to find out that this has all been one long nightmare? 

What if she never left Bly? 

The _what ifs_ keep coming, threatening to fill her mind and completely wipe out the side of her that hopes like hell that this is real. What spurs her to eventually turn around is Owen leaning in to whisper in her ear. 

“C’mon, love. You don’t want to miss this.” 

He’s right. She doesn’t. So, shoving all of her doubts and worries as far back into her mind as she can manage, she turns around. 

Dani is standing at the head of the aisle, clutching a bouquet tight to her chest, a bouquet that Jamie agonized over for so many hours. She’d filled pages and pages of a notebook with ideas as she sat behind the counter at work, filled in sketch after sketch and then immediately crossed them out. She hadn’t been entirely happy with the finished product, but the lack of time had made it imperative for her to settle on something, and so she had. 

All of her doubts have officially washed away. 

The bouquet, a swirling mix of light pink and lavender and sky blue, compliments Dani’s outfit perfectly. She’s wearing a pair of golden flats and a white, sleeveless dress with tiny straps bisecting her shoulders. While it’s a little more elaborate than a sundress, trimmed with lace where it cuts off just below her knees, the cut and fit are fairly similar. Based on the glinting that Jamie can see at the sweetheart neckline, there must be beads or gems sewn into the fabric, catching the sunlight. Her hair is pulled back away from her face, with only a single strand on each side left to frame.

But while the rest of her ensemble looks fantastic, the part that Jamie finds most beautiful is Dani’s smile. It’s bright enough to put the sun to shame, and it reaches all the way up to her eyes, crinkling them at the corners. It’s that smile that makes tears spring to Jamie’s eyes, and she’s very grateful for the weight of Owen’s hand on her shoulder. It’s the only thing that keeps her from drifting away or bolting up the aisle, ceremony be damned, and pulling Dani into an everlasting kiss.

She must say something to that effect under her breath, because Owen laughs softly beside her. 

“Told you that you didn’t want to miss this.” 

Barely keeping her composure, she watches as Dani begins to walk down the aisle with careful steps, keeping her bouquet clutched tightly to her chest. As she gets closer, more details of her look spring out at Jamie, and she finds herself fixating on each one in sequence – on the subtle strands of silver permeating the dress, woven into patterns that she can’t quite make out; on Dani’s earrings, long, thin chains of gold that reach halfway down her neck; on the way that her makeup, light and shimmery, complements both of her eyes perfectly. 

Not once does her smile flag, and not once does she turn her head to look at the guests on either side of the aisle, most of whom look as dumbstruck as Jamie feels. Her gaze remains fixed on Jamie, wholly and entirely, and with each step that she takes, Jamie somehow, impossibly, falls more in love with her. 

By the time Dani comes to stand beside her, having paused only to give Owen a kiss on the cheek, Jamie’s chest is as taut as a snare drum. She’s given up on trying to restrain her tears, makeup be damned all to hell – they burn hot down her cheeks and drip off her jaw. There’s a lump in her throat, and she’s pretty sure that the moment she has to speak, she’s going to sob instead. It’ll probably be a bit embarrassing, but sod it – there’s a reason they only invited a handful of people. They’re all people that they know and trust, and she can be sure that not one of them is going to mock her for wearing her heart so blatantly on her sleeve. 

If her instincts turn out to be wrong, well, then she’ll throw the person in question into the river. 

Owen takes over, asking the guests to be seated, and without being told, Jamie reaches out and takes hold of Dani’s hands, holding on to both her fingers and the bouquet at the same time. 

“Hey, Poppins,” she says quietly, pitching her voice as low as she can. As much as she loves their friends, she doesn’t want to address them right now – this is only for Dani. 

“Hey,” Dani replies in a whisper. A tear cuts down the pale flesh of her cheek. “You look amazing.” 

“This coming from you.” Before Dani can reply again, Owen begins his speech in earnest, and Jamie listens to him carefully, aware that at some point, she’ll need to follow some prompts. In a normal wedding, they would exchange their own vows at some point, but after much consideration, they’d decided to let Owen take care of that part. Letting people see her cry is one thing; having to lay herself raw and bare in front of their friends is quite another. 

Dani is the only one who gets to see her like that. 

Even though he still manages to sneak in some atrocious puns, Owen’s speech is beautiful. He talks about what love means to him, how you know it when you feel it and, perhaps more importantly, how you know it when you see it. It feels a little strange, listening to him talk the two of them and their relationship up, but at the same time, Jamie knows that he’s being nothing less than truthful. At one point, towards the end, before she and Dani have to pick up the thread, he starts crying as well. He doesn’t make any attempt to hide it – he soldiers on through with damp eyes, dripping onto the index cards that he has barely consulted. 

“Now, I was going to ask the two of you to link hands, but I see you’ve already taken care of that part,” he says, drawing laughter from both them and their guests. “So, onto the next bit then.” Turning slightly, so that he’s facing Jamie, he says, “Jamie, do you take Dani to be your wife, through good and bad, through everything that the two of you will face, from now till the end?” 

Swallowing heavily, voice emerging from her throat as a crackle, she says, “I do.” 

Owen turns to Dani and repeats the words. She responds through sniffles. “I do.” 

“Fantastic.” Reaching into his pocket, Owen pulls out their rings. “If you would care to take the rings.” 

Dani grabs Jamie’s, and Jamie grabs Dani’s, and the two of them remain holding them until Owen gives them a nod. They both reach out at the same time, and their outstretched fingers bump together hard enough that Jamie has to scramble to keep hold of the ring. 

“Sorry,” Dani says with a giggle. “Do you want to-“ 

“You first,” Jamie says, keeping Dani’s ring tucked securely in her palm and stretching out her finger, which she’s unsurprised to see is trembling. After two false starts, Dani slides the ring home and extends her own finger, so that Jamie can return the favor. Dani’s finger is trembling almost as badly, and once Jamie has slid the ring into place, she takes Dani’s hands again, squeezing tightly, willing those nerves and overflowing anxiety to go away, even though she knows it’s slightly hypocritical, seeing as her own shows no sign of abating.

“Is there anyone here who cares to object?” Owen asks, looking out at the gathered guests. Considering that nothing about this day is binding in the eyes of the law, it’s a little bit of a useless question to ask, but she remains quiet, growing more and more antsy with each successive second that ticks by. 

Finally, after a period of time that feels like minutes but is maybe fifteen seconds at most, Owen speaks again. 

“Well then,” he says, turning back to the two of them with a giant smile on his face, his mustache damp in spots from the tears continuing to leak from his eyes, “by the power vested in me by myself, I now pronounce you wife and wife. You may now kiss.” 

There’s nothing else they need to do after this, no marriage license that needs signing or witnesses that need to be wrangled. There are no more formalities, just celebration, so Jamie doesn’t feel bad about how long she kisses Dani for, how long the two of them stay firmly entwined, Dani’s bouquet pressed between them, their tears mingling together. She’s vaguely aware that they’re surrounded by clapping on all sides, but the sound is muffled, like it’s coming from four rooms away rather than a few feet. 

The rest of the world has dissolved away. She wants to stay in this moment forever, just the two of them, tangled up in each other, nothing else mattering. 

But when they break apart, reality comes rushing back, and as much as Jamie adores Owen and the rest of their friends, part of her wishes that she could take Dani’s hand and flee up the aisle, wishes that they could run away from their small reception and go back home, spend the rest of the evening with each other, celebrating in their own way. 

Alas, doing that would probably put a damper on the day, and if there’s one thing she doesn’t want to do, it’s screw this up in any way, shape or form. So, while she takes Dani’s hand and heads toward the aisle, she doesn’t make a run for it. She keeps her steps steady, and she accepts the compliments that come in from their friends. It doesn’t take long to run through the line, and once they reach the end of the aisle, they keep going up to the house. She suspects that the food is ready, so she doubts that they’ll have to wait long before they dive into the next stage of the evening, but she knows there’s one thing she needs to do before they get to that point. 

Namely, change out of her heels and back into her battered boots, which she left in Owen’s car. 

The rest of the night is a bit of a blur. They move the chairs that were used for the ceremony over to Lucy’s fire pit by the river, and once they’ve gotten food from inside, they settle down there. Jamie eats until her stomach aches, she drinks until her head is spinning, and she laughs until her chest hurts. The flow of her tears stops and starts half a dozen times and, even in her well-worn boots, they spend so much time dancing that her feet are throbbing by the time the night comes to an end. 

While she’ll later have a hard time remembering the specifics of what she ate or the songs that they danced to while the moon rose overhead, Jamie will always remember one thing about the evening. 

She doesn’t leave Dani’s side. During dinner and the speeches and the dancing and the journey back home, she stays beside Dani, holding her hand whenever it’s possible to do so, keeping her close. When they fall asleep that night, clothes strewn across the floor of their bedroom, she presses herself against Dani’s back, curves her arm around Dani’s bare waist and tucks her knees into the bend of Dani’s. She’s too tired to say anything, but there's one thing that keeps her pressed there even when their skin, still sweaty from making love, starts to stick together in an unpleasant manner. 

This is the only place she wants to be for the rest of her life. 

She knows, of course, that such a thing isn’t possible. One day, no matter how hard she tries, Dani is going to slip away from her. But Jamie isn’t going to accept that day until it’s staring her dead in the face, and she’s not going to think about it for any longer. She’s not going to let the spectre that permanently hangs over them darken her wedding day. 

So instead, she falls asleep, wrapped around her wife tightly, and while her dreams are not peaceful, waking up to the sight of Dani’s sleepy smile directed at her while she plays with Jamie’s hair is more than enough to wipe out the lingering darkness of those dreams.

5.

Towards the end, for every good or halfway decent day that they have, there are several bad days in between.

Even the good days start to take on a shadow of their own. Even on the days where Dani wakes up with a smile on her thin lips, Jamie still finds herself on edge, convinced that, at any given moment, something is going to pop the bubble that they’ve temporarily found themselves in. 

With each subsequent streak of bad days that they have, she becomes more aware that their next good day might be their last. But she convinces herself that she’ll somehow know when that final day has come, convinces herself that Dani will give her some kind of sign. 

However, as things actually unfold, there’s nothing about their last good day together that reveals that it is, indeed, the last day. It’s only in retrospect that Jamie is able to pin it down as such. 

It’s a Friday, and she doesn’t have to work; over the last few years, as the shop has grown, she’s been able to hire a few employees, all of whom are very knowledgeable and who she trusts to look after the shop for the day. She was planning on maybe stopping in at some point after lunch to get some paperwork done, but when she wakes up and sees that Dani is already awake, smiling down at her and clutching a steaming coffee cup that’s almost the same color as the bags under her eyes, Jamie crosses that plan out. 

Paperwork can wait. 

“Hey,” she says with a yawn, stretching her arms above her head and pushing herself up to lean back against the headboard. “You’re up early.” Lately, Dani’s nights have been split apart by nightmares, and it seems like the only time she gets any restful sleep is the early morning, when most other people are waking up. Seeing her not only awake at this time of day but with a smile on her face, as opposed to a pinched expression of pain and with dried, crusted trails of tears on her cheeks, makes Jamie feel like she’s won the lottery.

“Good morning,” Dani responds, leaning over and brushing a kiss against Jamie’s temple. “Kettle is still hot, if you want something.” 

“Mm,” Jamie hums happily, leaning into the soft touch of Dani’s lips. “Think I’ll take you up on that in a minute.” As much as she would love some caffeine, she wants to savor this moment, wants to savor being with Dani without any kind of interruptions, so she lingers for a minute, leans over and rests her head on Dani’s shoulder when Dani pulls back to take a sip of her coffee. Her collarbone, peeking out from underneath the neckline of her shirt, is pressing up against her pale skin like it’s trying to escape, and when Jamie shuffles a little closer, she can feel Dani’s ribs pressing against her side, the ladder of them easy to distinguish. 

It makes her heart hurt, feeling all of the places where Dani is coming close to falling apart, and part of her wants to take Dani’s face between her palms and tell her that it’s okay. She doesn’t have to hang on any longer, she doesn’t have to keep clinging on, it’s okay to let go. She doesn’t have to be strong anymore – she’s been strong for so damn long, and despite her best efforts, it’s clear that the Lady is eating her up inside. 

But, frankly, as much as she tries to deny it sometimes, in this regard at least, Jamie is a coward. Bringing it up would mean acknowledging the elephant in the room, and on a day like today, it’s almost possible to pretend that the elephant doesn’t exist at all, so long as she doesn’t spend too long looking into Dani’s multicolored eyes. She doesn’t know how many more of Dani’s smiles she’ll be privy too, and she doesn’t want to make this one fade before its time. 

So rather than speaking up, she stays silent. She turns her head, rests her cheek against Dani’s chest, and simply listens to her breathing for a few minutes, savors the soft feeling of Dani’s shirt against her skin and the smell of her, coffee and laundry detergent and clean sweat. 

Eventually, her need for caffeine grows too strong, and with an apologetic kiss to the side of Dani’s neck, she excuses herself to grab some tea and breakfast and freshen up a little. 

When she comes back to the bedroom, trickles of water flowing down from her neck from her damp hair and skin, carrying a bowl of cereal and a mug of tea, Dani is back under the blanket, and she’s playing with the remote, flicking between channels on the muted television. 

“Back to the Future starts in a few minutes,” Dani says, gentle smile showing no sign of flagging. “Want to watch?” 

“Sure,” Jamie answers with a shrug, setting her mug on her nightstand before she joins Dani in bed. “Never seen it.” 

Dani’s jaw drops with an almost audible sound, and for a moment, it looks like all of the stress and pain and anguish that she’s been carrying for the last few years has officially melted away. There’s nothing on her face but shock and glee, and the sight of it makes Jamie’s eyes heat up with tears. Before they can spill over, she tucks herself back against Dani’s side, and says, “Oh no. Did I say something wrong?” 

“I can’t believe I never showed it to you,” Dani replies. The hand that isn’t wrapped around her mug slips under the blanket and rests on Jamie’s knee. “I think you’ll like it.” 

As it turns out, Jamie does and, furthermore, Back to the Future isn’t the only good movie playing on television that day. Once it comes to a close, Dani skips over to another channel, and they start anew. 

The day proceeds in that fashion. They stay in bed, only getting up when it’s strictly necessary. Neither of them cook dinner – instead, they order in pizza, and they eat it in bed while yet another movie, one that they’ve both already seen, plays in the background. 

On the surface of it, there’s nothing particularly special about the day. They don’t do anything exciting or new or novel. But that’s not important. What’s important, what’s _wonderful_ about the day, is that for a few hours, they’re able to forget about everything. Jamie puts work out of her mind, and neither of them mention the elephant in the room.

They should talk about it soon. But it can wait for a day. Maybe tomorrow, they can hash out the finer details of their future. For today, Jamie wants to enjoy being with her wife and, more importantly, she wants to make sure that Dani enjoys herself as well. 

After they’ve cleaned up from dinner, they get ready for bed, and even though Jamie has spent almost the entire day curled up, she’s still more than happy to sprawl out underneath the blankets, after she’s lit a candle to make the room smell a little less like pizza. Dani picks up the remote, but she doesn’t turn off the television – instead, she turns the volume down before she places it down and rolls over so that she’s facing Jamie. 

“I love you,” she says, looking at Jamie with wide, earnest eyes. Jamie has no idea how many times she’s heard those words from Dani, but they never fail to make her heart skip a bit, and she reaches out to brush a stray piece of Dani’s hair away from her face. 

“Love you too,” she replies, smoothing her thumb down Dani’s cheek. “You okay?” 

Dani nods and smiles. “Yeah. I am.” Before Jamie can pull her hand away from Dani's face, Dani catches it and presses it against her cheek, cranes up into the touch and closes her eyes. 

Jamie’s heart skips another beat. 

Before she can make any kind of move, Dani opens her eyes back up, presses a kiss to Jamie’s palm, and rolls over onto her back. Grabbing the remote again, she says, “So, what do you want to watch now?”

They end up settling on a rerun of some procedural detective drama, and while Jamie is willing to admit that the synopsis actually sounds interesting, she barely makes it through the first ten minutes of the episode before her eyes start to droop. It’s not a surprise – what’s surprising is that she didn’t start drifting off sooner, what with the weight of dinner in her stomach and the warmth of the room and the soothing nature of Dani’s company. She catches her head slumping down towards her chest, and she jerks back upward, rubbing at her leaden eyes. She can already feel them threatening to close again, and even though everything in her brain is screaming at her to stay awake a little longer, her body refuses to take the hint. 

So she settles for the next best thing. If she can’t stay awake, she can at least cuddle up to Dani. Sliding down the bed, she drops her head into Dani’s lap and closes her eyes against the flickering blue light of the television. Dani’s hand drops to her hair and starts playing with it, and if Jamie had any chance of staying awake, it would be destroyed by that simple action alone. 

“Just wake me up when you want me to move,” she mumbles, curling one hand lightly around Dani’s thigh. 

In response, Dani leans over and brushes another kiss against Jamie’s temple. “Don’t worry about me. Get some sleep. I love you, and I’ll see you in the morning.” 

Jamie tries to respond, tries to say _I love you_ back, but what comes out of her mouth is more an incoherent jumble than anything. 

But that’s okay. She can say it properly in the morning, when she wakes up. 

(If she’d known then what she knows now, if she’d known that night was her last chance to say _I love you, I love you so much, you are the best thing that ever happened to me_ , she would have slapped herself awake. 

But instead, when she’d woken up, Dani had still been asleep, and in the chaos of the morning, in darting to the shop to deal with an emergency and running to city hall to pick up their marriage license, she hadn’t had time to say it.

And when she had finally returned from her errands, walked through the door clutching their license with a smile on her face and a skip in her step, Dani had been gone.

Jamie hasn’t had a skip in her step since.)

&.

Even if Jamie wanted to, even if she thought that it would ease the grieving process to forget each and every one of their bad days, if she was able to vanquish them in their entirety so that she was left with only the good, she wouldn’t do it.

Yes, the bad days had hurt. Seeing Dani struggling, seeing her in so much pain and utterly unable to do anything meaningful to ease her suffering had been like death by a thousand cuts. It never got any easier to deal with – indeed, as they trudged on towards the end, as the bad times were measured less in days and more in weeks, it only grew harder. 

But while those bad days continue to weigh heavily upon her shoulders, the simple fact of the matter is that the bad is far outweighed by the good. 

There is no way for her to accurately calculate how many good days that she had with Dani, but she suspects that the number would be well into the thousands. Regardless of the exact number, it’s more good days than many couples are lucky enough to get. It’s more good days than Jamie ever expected her life to contain. It’s more than she thought they would get together. And while she can’t remember all of them in detail, she can still _feel_ all of them, can feel that they collectively outweigh the bad. 

The collective weight of those good days, even the ones that she can no longer remember, is nothing less than a blessing. Despite the pain, despite the grief that still threatens to swallow her whole some days, the truth is that she has lived a very lucky life. She was lucky enough to meet an utterly spectacular woman, a woman who renewed her faith in humanity, a woman as bright and beautiful as the moon, who led her out of the darkness, whose smile lit up every room she walked into. 

She was lucky enough to meet Dani. 

And while she knows that, as the years go by, some of the good memories will fade even further while some of the bad ones may linger stubbornly, like a bloodstain refusing to come out of a shirt, losing individual good memories won’t change anything. 

For a time, she was lucky enough to find a moonflower constantly in bloom. And even despite the bad, despite the sorrow, despite her broken heart, even if she was somehow teleported back in time to Bly knowing what she knows now, knowing that one day, she would lose Dani completely…. 

Without hesitation, she would do it all over again.

She wouldn’t change a thing.


End file.
